


Stardust and Gold

by voxofthevoid



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Happy Ending, Improving Communication, Light Angst, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Miscommunication, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 00:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13224627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: Viktor dreams of Katsuki Yuuri, spring weddings, and happy ever after. Reality is different; Yuuri is there too, warm and bright and blind to the longing Viktor wears like a cloak.But Yuuri has his own dreams, and they're made of gold and starlight.In which Viktor desperately wants to marry the love of his life, and Yuuri is still trapped in a winter evening in Barcelona.





	Stardust and Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Celestialmaiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celestialmaiden/gifts).



> Based on #42 on this list: [things you said when you asked me to marry you.](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/post/168206052396/prompts-1-things-you-said-at-1-am-2-things)

December passes in a rush of ice, and sweat, and blood. Tears too, not when he trains until his bones creak or when a bad fall slices open a three inch cut on his arm, but at Yuuri, flushed and triumphant on the screen, lifting his medal for a kiss. Viktor can feel those lips touching his heart. Yuuri's eyes never leave the camera, and Viktor knows who the message is for.

Viktor's own medal, gold to match and tasting of Yuri Plisetsky’s anguished scream, rests in a bedside drawer, out of sight but never out of mind. Viktor is sure that Yuuri will appreciate it more than he did.

Skating alone gives him no triumph anymore. Yuuri can kiss it better. And then they'll marry.

January is three stolen days in Hasetsu followed by more ice, sweat, and blood, but this time, Yuuri is there to force him to soak in warm baths and massage his weary flesh and press sweet lips along stinging scrapes. Viktor feels so _adored_ , he can't breathe with it.

He wants to marry this man.

And he can. Their matching rings flash in the lights. Viktor stares at it whenever he can, until Yura yells at him, or Yakov sighs loud enough to shake the ice, or Yuuri tugs his hand away with a smile that trembles at the edges. Sometimes, when they take off the rings to shower, he catches Yuuri pressing the two together to admire the pattern etched inside.

A single snowflake, delicate and ephemeral, but immortalized in gold, sturdy like what Viktor and Yuuri have built out of dreams and stardust.

It still feels like a dream. Viktor catches Yuuri staring at him with something gaping and endless in the dark of his eyes and knows that he feels the same.

A part of Viktor is so intent on marriage because there's something so tangible about it. Not irreversible, never that. His mothers taught him that lesson when he was ten, and Yakov and Lilia reinforced it a decade later. Marriages fall apart all the time. But there's still something about it that calls to the part of him that has ached for a fairy tale since before he fell in love with the ice. He doesn't know if Yuuri is his princess or Prince Charming, but be knows he wants him forever.

Happy ever after.

He waits and waits, until January is done and gone, and February creeps in, the awareness of Worlds and his return to the international stage rising with it. Viktor trains hard, but his reward is going home at the end of the day with his beautiful fiancé and cuddling together with their dog. Russian media clearly feels differently, but he's got plenty of experience ignoring them.

He can't ignore Yuuri.

Yuuri's eyes are hard and cold in the rink as he throws himself into his skating with a single-minded determination that carves up the ice and sends liquid heat pooling in Viktor's belly. He's not the only one to stops to stare. Mila admires him, Yuri exhausts himself pretending he doesn't, and Georgi is tearfully impressed. Even Yakov, whose face permanently transformed into a scowl after five years of training Viktor, reacts with an approving nod every other day. Lilia remains impassive, but whisks Yuuri off to her studio and returns him panting and ready to drop but dazed and smiling.

It almost makes Viktor wonder if his lover is a masochist, but no, Viktor's the one in this relationship who loves pain.

After all, why else would he keep hinting and nudging, flashing his ring and speaking of spring and leaving out wedding catalogues in plain sight, even when the response never varies? Viktor knows he's about as subtle as a ten-foot pink flamingo. He might as well have _Marry Me_ tattooed on his forehead. And he would do just that if only it would help, fears about drawing notice to his receding hairline be damned.

But by the end of February, it's as clear as day that it won't make any difference.

It's not that Yuuri at home is like Yuuri in the rink. He's infinitely softer, brightening Viktor's once impersonal home just by existing. And he's so kind, so full of love, that Viktor often thinks that he can be content just like this - with matching rings and a shared existence. But Yuuri's reaction to any hint of marriage eradicates any solace Viktor might have found in that.

He never says anything. He doesn't flinch away either. But he watches with shadowed eyes as Viktor caresses their rings, listens to a monologue on spring weddings versus winter weddings with a pained smile, flips through the catalogues when he thinks Viktor isn't watching and then carefully returns them to their original state.

By mid-March, Viktor gives up.

He's still _happy_. Because Yuuri's there, he seems like he's there to stay, and he's everything Viktor has ever wanted and so much more. He pours that into his short program, a sweet, whimsical tune about love and lust and sheer, overwhelming bliss, and skates his way into first place.

But he doubts too, because he knows and remembers that nothing good has ever stayed in his life. There's Makkachin and there's Yuuri, the former now twelve and the latter a dream given flesh that Viktor cannot be enough to keep. That's what he embodies in his free skate, a gentle, morose masterpiece that was meant to bid farewell to an old life.

It's not enough to make him win, and in the end, his medal matches his hair. Viktor's never been happier.

Because Yuuri, scorching lust and tender love and everything in between from the grace in his limbs to the height of his jumps, is resplendent in gold.

“Yuuri!” Viktor calls, heart in his throat, and anything he might have said next is lost in the heat of Yuuri's mouth.

He hears cameras flash and the sound of Yuri, below them on the podium, gagging. But that's only a split-second of distraction that is thoroughly eradicated when Yuuri's tongue slides between his lips.

Yuuri lets him go after a brief eternity, flushed and heaving for breath. Viktor's no better; his heart flutters in his chest, and he wants nothing more than to lean in and melt into Yuuri. But Yuuri lets him go all too soon, Viktor's medal thumping back to his chest when Yuuri releases it. Viktor spares it a mildly surprised glance. He hadn't even registered Yuuri grabbing it to pull him into that kiss. The next moment, there's something tugging at his hair, and hands around his head, and a gold medal joining his own.

“What-”

Yuuri steps down, and Viktor freezes at the look on his face.

He doesn't breathe even when Yuuri gets down on one knee and unfurls his right fist to show a box that can only be one thing.  Inanely, Viktor wonders how that got there when Yuuri's hands were free when he kissed Viktor and placed the gold around his neck.

“I won you a gold medal,” Yuuri says, face set into hard lines of determination that abruptly softens into something vulnerable and anxious. “Marry me.”

 _You didn't need to win a gold medal. I've been ready to marry you since Sochi_ , Viktor wants to say.

 _We're already engaged_ , he thinks, his ring finger twitching.

“Yes,” he says, voice a faint whisper. His breath stutters, and his vision blurs, and the next moment, he’s on the ice with Yuuri, falling into him with arms open and grasping. “Yes, Yuuri. Yes!”

It's ridiculous that Yuuri's sigh sounds like one of relief.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur. Viktor's whole existence becomes narrowed to the new band on his finger. It's platinum, thinner than the gold ring, and designed to lie perfectly over it. Viktor has the feeling that he knows where one half of Yuuri's GPF prize money - the half that he didn't send to his family - went.

He's happy, but he's confused, and there's little he can do but cling to Yuuri and stare at his finger and hope that they both won't disappear.

Yuuri asked Viktor to marry him.

Yuuri _wants_ to marry Viktor.

He does pinch himself once. It hurts and pain's never been kinder.

It's only hours later, when they're alone in their hotel room and no longer reeling from a flood of questions and well-wishers, that they talk.

“Yuuri.”

“Vitya,” Yuuri murmurs, reaching over to tuck a strand of Viktor's hair behind his ear. It's so sweet, and Yuuri looks so happy that Viktor's tempted to kiss him silly and save the words for later.

But he can't. He suspects that he has already done that for far too long.

“I was scared you didn't want to marry me,” Viktor blurts, any attempt to be careful lost in a torrent of emotions. His eyes sting. “You never said anything. Even when I - I was so scared.”

It _hurts_ to see the joy leech of Yuuri's face and be replaced with bewilderment.

“What? That’s not... Of course I want to marry you! Vitya, I've fantasized about marrying you since I was twelve. And I know, I know the boy I dreamed about wasn't even real, but learning who you are under the legend only ever made me want you, love you, more.”

By the end, Yuuri’s voice is ringing in the room, passion, not anger, lending it vehemence.

“Vitya, no, don't cry.”

It's not until Yuuri's patting his face with desperate motions that Viktor even registers his tears.

“I'm happy,” he says, choked. “I'm crying because I'm happy.”

“You thought I didn't want to marry you. _Why_?”

“I - because you never said anything. I tried talking about it, but you’d never respond. You looked so sad too. I thought we were engaged. And Yuuri, I'm happy, I'm so happy, but you proposed to tonight as if I weren't already your fiancé.”

“I didn't want to talk about it,” Yuuri answers, voice low and eyes downcast. “You said I had to win gold. And I didn't. Not until now. Nationals doesn’t count.”

Viktor's blood runs cold.

“Of course I wanted that wedding, Vitya. I hated that I couldn't make it happen.”

Viktor's lips are numb, his tongue leaden, but he makes himself speak before Yuuri's words tear through them both.

Maybe it's too late.

“I'm so sorry. I never meant it that way. I wanted to encourage you, I-"

_We'll get married once Yuuri wins a gold medal._

It was encouragement. Incentive. And maybe also a fail-safe because Viktor never doubted that Yuuri would win gold, but he had no such confidence in their relationship. Yuuri proved him right the next day with a handful of words, but they talked about it after the GPF.

They talked about how Yuuri hurt Viktor. They never once talked about how Viktor hurt Yuuri.

“It wasn't a condition,” Viktor finally says, trying to keep the sinking feeling in his chest out of his voice. “You're worth more to me than a million gold medals.”

Yuuri's touch on his wrist is unexpected, but it grounds him, anchoring him to the present.

“I know that, Vitya. I know how much you love me. But I couldn't just forget what you said.”

Yuuri was well within his rights not to. Especially when Viktor was so selfish that he never once thought back to that night and how his words sounded.

“I'm sorry,” he repeats like a broken record.

Yuuri ceases stroking his wrist and grabs his hand, tangling their fingers together. Viktor's rings catch the light.

“It's okay. It's over. We both misunderstood.”

Viktor shakes his head, his self-reproach stronger than Yuuri's soothing words.

“I messed up so much.”

“Like I messed up when I told my coach I was retiring, and my boyfriend that I was ending our relationship, all with no warning?” Yuuri retorts sharply.

Viktor rears back, but Yuuri keeps a tight hold of him, his grip firm and reassuring.

“We talked about that. We fixed that.”

“And we're talking now, fixing this.”

“It's so late, Yuuri. And I never knew how you hurt.”

“You were hurting too. I never realized that either. I just thought all the wedding talk was your way of hinting that I better beat you and get gold.”

Viktor flinches, but Yuuri just shakes his head.

“It was stupid of me. We're new to this. Both of us. We'll stumble and fall a lot.”

“That's not an easy thing when we're both perfectionists, Yuuri.”

Yuuri's wry smile tells him that he learned that lesson the hard way. And with the shock of everything ebbing, Viktor can see that he himself also got a good taste of it. But they're both learning still.

“I love the ring,” Viktor says after a long pause filled with thick silence. “I'll get you one to match.”

“You don't have to,” Yuuri replies automatically. Then he catches Viktor's eye and grins sheepishly. “But I'd like that.”

“Spring wedding? In Hasetsu?”

“Please. Okasaan will love it.”

Before he knows it, Viktor's moving, throwing himself at Yuuri and sending them sprawling on the bed.

“I love you so much. And I'm going to marry you so hard.”

Yuuri's laughter wraps around his heart, snug and sweet.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yuri carried that ring box with him to the podium and handed it to Yuuri as he stepped down. He just wants his idiots to get their shit together, even if he’ll grumble about it to hell and back.
> 
> Feedback is very much appreciated!


End file.
